Etymology

The Greek word Χριστιανός (christianos)—meaning "follower of Christ"—comes from Χριστός (christos)—meaning "anointed one"[4]—with an adjectival ending borrowed from Latin to denote adhering to, or even belonging to, as in slave ownership.[5] In the GreekSeptuagint, christos was used to translate the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ,messiah), meaning "[one who is] anointed."[6] In other European languages, equivalent words to 'Christian' are likewise derived from the Greek, such as 'Chrétien' in French and 'Cristiano' in Spanish.

Early usage

The first recorded use of the term "Christian" is found in the New Testament, in Acts 11:26, which states "...in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians." The second mention of the term follows in Acts 26:28, where Herod Agrippa II replies to Paul the Apostle, "Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?" The third and final New Testament reference to the term is in 1 Peter 4:16, which exhorts believers, "...if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name". Mattison suggests that "[t]he New Testament's use of this term indicates that it was a term of derision, a term placed upon Christ's followers by their critics."[7]

Most liberal Christian denominations, secularists, and public opinion pollsters define "Christian" very broadly as any person or group who sincerely believes themselves to be Christian. Using this definition, Christians total about 75% of the North American adult population.

Many Fundamentalist and other Evangelical Protestants define "Christian" more narrowly to include only those persons who have been "born again" or have made a personal commitment to follow Jesus irrespective of their denomination. About 35% of the North American adult population identify themselves in this way.

Some Protestant Christian denominations, para-church groups, and individuals have assembled their own lists of cardinal Christian doctrines. Many would regard anyone who denies even one of their cardinal doctrines to be a non-Christian. Unfortunately, there is a wide diversity of opinion as to which historical Christian beliefs are cardinal doctrines.

Other denominations and sects regard their own members to be the only true Christians in the world. Some are quite small, numbering only a few thousand followers.[11]

In North America there are over a thousand faith groups including the Roman Catholic church; the Eastern Orthodox churches, other conservative, mainline, liberal and progressive Christian faith groups; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons); Jehovah's Witnesses, the Unification Church, Christian Science, progressive Christians, and other religious organizations. They all identify themselves as Christian. In fact, many regard their group as the only "true" Christian church. Yet they, and their followers, have very different beliefs about the life, events, teachings, actions, sinlessness and expectations of Yeshua. Also included as Christians are those who regard themselves as being followers of Jesus even though they do not affiliate themselves with any particular religious group. They appear to be growing in numbers.[11]

Anderson Cooper has reported that in the United States, "more than 85 percent is Christian and two-thirds of [Americans], a number that's climbing, consider America a Christian nation. But from there, the lines start to blur."[12]

Two recent empirical studies reveal differences in beliefs and religious practices among Christians in the U.S.:

Baylor University study

The Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion conducted a survey covering various aspects of American religious life.[13] Analysis of the data is ongoing, but some preliminary results show that Americans may be expressing their faith somewhat differently according to their particular beliefs.

A third of Americans (33.6 percent), roughly 100 million people, are Evangelical Protestants by affiliation.

The majority (62.9 percent) of Americans not affiliated with a religious tradition believe in God or some higher power.

Baylor researchers found that the type of god people believe in can predict their political and moral attitudes more so than just looking at their religious tradition. They identified four major concepts of God among Christians, though none of the four dominated belief:

31 Percent believe in an Authoritarian God who is very judgmental and engaged.

25 Percent believe in a Benevolent God who is not judgmental but is engaged.

23 Percent believe in a Distant God who is completely removed.

16 Percent believe in a Critical God who is judgmental but not engaged.

Christianity Today study

Another study, conducted by Christianity Today with Leadership magazine, attempted to understand the range and differences among American Christians. A national attitudinal and behavioral survey found that their beliefs and practices clustered into five distinct segments. Spiritual growth for two large segments of Christians may be occurring in non-traditional ways. Instead of attending church on Sunday mornings, many opt for personal, individual ways to stretch themselves spiritually.[14]

19 percent of American Christians are described by the researchers as Active Christians. They believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ, attend church regularly, are Bible readers, invest in personal faith development through their church, believe they are obligated to share their faith with others, and accept leadership positions in their church.

20 percent are referred to as Professing Christians. They also are committed to "accepting Christ as Savior and Lord" as the key to being a Christian, but focus more on personal relationships with God and Jesus than on church, Bible reading or evangelizing.

24 percent are considered Private Christians. They own a Bible but don't tend to read it. Only about one-third attend church at all. They believe in God and in doing good things, but not necessarily within a church context. This was the largest and youngest segment. Almost none are church leaders.

21 percent in the research are called Cultural Christians. These do not view Jesus as essential to salvation. They exhibit little outward religious behavior or attitudes. They favor a universality theology that sees many ways to God. Yet, they clearly consider themselves to be Christians.

Hebrew terms

As the identification of the Messiah with Jesus is not accepted within Judaism, the Talmudic term for Christians in Hebrew is Notzrim ("Nazarenes"), originally derived from the fact that Jesus came from the city of Nazareth in Israel.[15] However, Messianic Jews are referred to in modern Hebrew as יהודים משיחיים (Yehudim Meshihi'im).

Arabic terms

In Arabic-speaking cultures, two words are commonly used for Christians: Nasrani (نصراني), plural "Nasara" (نصارى) is generally understood to be derived from Nazareth[16] through the Syriac (Aramaic); Masihi (مسيحي) means followers of the Messiah.[16][17]

Where there is a distinction, Nasrani refers to people from a Christian culture and Masihi means those with a religious faith in Jesus.[18] In some countries Nasrani tends to be used generically for non-Muslim white people.[18] Another Arabic word sometimes used for Christians, particularly in a political context, is Salibi; this refers to Crusaders and has negative connotations.[17][19]

Chinese

Christian behavior

Although the term "Christian" has been defined as "all that is noble, and good, and Christ-like,"[3] there is not general agreement as to what constitutes Christian behavior. What is Christian behavior and what is "un-Christian"?

What constitutes the standard of good morals? Is it not Christianity? There certainly is none other. Say that cannot be appealed to and...what would be good morals? The day of moral virtue in which we live would, in an instant, if that standard were abolished, lapse into the dark and murky night of pagan immorality.

Illustrative of the considerable contemporary variance in what constitutes Christian behavior is a recent controversy over an NBC television program that featured a virtual litany of issues about which there is sensitivity and debate among Christians. Opposition of the program was characterized by the show's creator, Jack Kenny, as “censorship, pure and simple—and that is both un-Christian and un-American.”[20] "The Book of Daniel," written by a homosexual, was promoted (by the network) as the only show on television in which Jesus appeared as a recurring character and the only network prime-time drama series with a regular male "gay" character, a 23-year-old Republican son. The main character, Daniel Webster, has been described as "a troubled, pill-popping Episcopal priest."[21] Further issues were brought up by other program characters: the priest's wife relied on midday martinis, their 16-year-old daughter was a drug dealer, their 16-year-old adopted son was sexually active with the bishop’s daughter, and the priest’s lesbian secretary was sleeping with his sister-in-law. NBC canceled the show after the fourth episode.[20]

^Bickerman, Elias J. (April, 1949). "The Name of Christians". The Harvard Theological Review42 (2): 109–124. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1507955. "Generally, the formations derive from a proper name or title and denote the followers, supporters, adherents, or partisans of a person, as in Brutianus, Augustianus, Caesarianus, and so on.".

From Wikiquote

The
neutrality of this article is disputed.Please see discussion on the talk page.

I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the
heavens alone (Isaiah44:12) versus In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. The same was in the beginning with God. (John1:1–2)

"Go!" He told them. So when they had come out, they entered the
pigs. And suddenly the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into
the sea and perished in the water. Then the men who tended them
fled. They went into the city and reported everything—especially
what had happened to those who were demon-possessed. At that, the
whole town went out to meet Jesus. When they saw Him, they begged
Him to leave their region.

The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out
of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They
will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping
and gnashing of teeth.

[H]is master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers
until he should pay all that was due to him. “So My heavenly Father
also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not
forgive his brother his trespasses.”

When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead
an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front
of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is
your responsibility!"
All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our
children!"

[T]he sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its
light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies
will be shaken. … They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds
of the sky, with power and great glory. … I tell you the truth,
this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things
have happened.

The next day when they came out from Bethany, He was hungry.
After seeing in the distance a fig tree with leaves, He went to
find out if there was anything on it. When He came to it, He found
nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. He said
to it, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again!"

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever
does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany
those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will
speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands;
and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all;
they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a
virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of
David. The virgin's name was Mary. … [T]he angel said to her, "Do
not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be
with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the
name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most
High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will
never end." "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a
virgin?" The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you,
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what
credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting
to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and
lend to them without expecting to get anything back.

[T]he Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and
plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to
accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his
teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: "Israel is
as obstinate as a stubborn heifer." … Although such beasts are
unfit for work, they are fit for killing. And this is what happened
to the Jews: while they were making themselves unfit for work, they
grew fit for slaughter. This is why Christ said: "But as for these
my enemies, who did not want me to be king over them, bring them
here and slay them." (Luke19:27)

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary
Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. There was a
violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven
and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it.

On the first day of the week came Mary Magdalene early, when it
was yet dark, unto the sepulcher and saw the stone taken away from
the sepulcher.

Matthew28:1-2's account of the
discovery of the tomb (two Mary's arrive at the tomb after sunrise,
but before the stone had been removed) versus John20:1's account (one Mary
arrives at the tomb before sunrise, but after the stone had been
removed)

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with
joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them.
"Greetings," he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and
worshiped him.

Jesus said unto her, "Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended
to My Father …"

Matthew28:8-9's account of the
appearance of the resurrected Jesus (Jesus appears away from that
tomb, and the Mary's touch his feet; see also Luke24:13-15 in which Jesus
appears on the road to Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem) versus John20:17's account (Jesus
appears at the tomb and tells Mary not to touch him)

[Y]e also have suffered like things of your own countrymen,
even as they have of the Jews: Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and
their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not
God, and are contrary to all men.

In flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God,
and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the
presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power. (2
Thessalonians 1:8-9)

For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers,
specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped,
who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for
filthy lucre's sake.

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's
sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors, as
unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and
for the praise of them that do well.

… Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of
prophecy.
Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat
on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges
and makes war.
His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many
crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except
Himself.
He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called
The Word of God. …
Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should
strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of
iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath
of Almighty God.
And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

Then I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud
voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven,
“Come and gather together for the supper of the great God,
that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the
flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and of those who sit on
them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both small and
great.”
And I saw the beast, the kings of the earth, and their armies,
gathered together to make war against Him who sat on the horse and
against His army.
Then the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who
worked signs in his presence, by which he deceived those who
received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image.
These two were cast alive into the lake of fire burning with
brimstone.
And the rest were killed with the sword which proceeded from the
mouth of Him who sat on the horse. And all the birds were filled
with their flesh.

[Jesus laughs as he watches his disciples offering a prayer to
God before Passover.]
Disciples: Why are you laughing at us?
Jesus says that he is laughing not at them but at their strange
idea of pleasing their God.

Only Judas has guessed the master aright—and has discerned that
he comes from the heavenly realm of the god "Barbelo." In the realm of Barbelo, it seems,
earthly pains are unknown and the fortunate inhabitants are free
from the attentions of the God of the Old Testament. Jesus himself
is descended in some fashion from Adam's third son, Seth. With
Judas' help, he hopes to guide the seed of Seth back to the realm
of Barbelo.

[O]ut beyond the stars, there exists a divine, blessed realm,
free of the materiality of this earthly one. This is the realm of
Barbelo, a name that gnostics gave the
celestial Mother, who lives there with, among others, her progeny,
a good God awkwardly called the Self-Generated One. Jesus, it turns
out, is not the son of the Old Testament God, whose retinue
includes a rebellious creator known as Yaldabaoth, but an avatar of Adam’s third
son, Seth. His mission is to show those lucky members of mankind
who still have a “Sethian” spark the way back to the blessed realm.
Jesus, we learn, was laughing at the disciples’ prayer because it
was directed at their God, the Old Testament God, who is really no
friend of mankind but, rather, the cause of its suffering.

He questioned them about the Saviour: Did He really speak
privately with a woman and not openly to us? Are we to turn about
and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?
Then Mary wept and said to Peter, My brother Peter, what do you
think? Do you think that I have thought this up myself in my heart,
or that I am lying about the Saviour?
Levi answered and said to Peter, Peter you have always been hot
tempered.
Now I see you contending against the woman like the
adversaries.
But if the Saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject
her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well.
That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and
put on the perfect Man, and separate as He commanded us and preach
the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what
the Saviour said.
And when they heard this they began to go forth to proclaim and to
preach.

Sin as such does not exist, but you make sin when you do what
is of the nature of fornication, which is called "sin." For this
reason the Good came into your midst, to the essence of each
nature, to restore it to its root. For this reason you come into
existence and die.

In response to a question by Peter: "Since you have now
explained all things to us, tell us this: what is the sin of the
world?"

Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and
whoever blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven, but whoever
blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven either on
earth or in heaven.

Acts of Pilate,
or The Gospel of Nicodemus

The elders of the Jews answered and said unto Jesus: What shall
we see? Firstly, that thou wast born of fornication; secondly, that
thy birth in Bethlehem was the cause of the slaying of children;
thirdly, that thy father Joseph and thy mother Mary fled into Egypt
because they had no confidence before the people.

The
Talmud

Babylonian
Talmud

Yeshua's mother was Miriam [Mary] …
This is as they say about her in the Pumbeditha: This one strayed
from [was unfaithful to] her husband. … He is guilty as a beguiler
who says, "I will worship (other gods)," … In the case of any one
who is liable to death penalties enjoined in the Law, it is not
proper to lie in wait for him except he be a beguiler … [as] they
did to Ben
Stada whom they hanged on the eve of the Passover. … The
husband of his mother was called Stada, and her seducer Pandera.

The Talmud, Mishnah 27:15, "Offenders Liable to Capital
Punishment: The Beguiler to Idolatry" (ca. 200). Peter Schäfer in
Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, 2007) explains: "if the Babylonian Talmud takes it for granted that Jesus' mother was an adulteress,
then the logical conclusion follows that we was a mamzer, a bastard or illegitimate
child."

Palestinian
Talmud

Early Middle
Ages

… the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed,
because it is absurd.

This, I shall say, is He, the son of the carpenter or the
whore, the destroyer of the Sabbath, the
Samaritan and Who had a devil. This is He, Whom
ye bought of Judas: this is He, Who was smitten with a reed and
with bufferings, dishonoured with spittings, drugged with gall and
vinegar. This is He, Whom the disciples stole secretly away, that
it might be said that He had risen again[.]

Jesus reveals the law to us when he reveals to us the secrets
of the law. For we who are of the catholic Church, we do not spurn
the law of Moses but accept it, so long as it is Jesus who reads it
to us. Indeed, we can only possess a correct understanding of the
Law when he reads it to us, and we are able to receive his sense
and understanding.

‘If,’ said he, ‘the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten
had a beginning of existence: and from this it is evident, that
there was a time when the Son was not. It therefore necessarily
follows, that he had his substance from nothing.’

It was … declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in
the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having
been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are
necessarily blinded. … Let us, then, have nothing in common with
the Jews, who are our adversaries. ... avoiding all contact with
that evil way. … who, after having compassed the death of the Lord,
being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an
unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. …
a people so utterly depraved. … Therefore, this irregularity must
be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common
with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. … no
single point in common with the perjury of the Jews.

Nothing is more miserable than those people who never failed to
attack their own salvation. When there was need to observe the Law,
they trampled it under foot. … On this account Stephen said: "You
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart, you always resist the Holy
Spirit", not only by transgressing the Law but also by wishing to
observe it at the wrong time.

[T]he Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and
plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they failed to
accept the yoke of Christ, nor did they pull the plow of his
teaching. Another prophet hinted at this when he said: "Israel is
as obstinate as a stubborn heifer." … Although such beasts are
unfit for work, they are fit for killing.

Whoever is separated from this Catholic Church, by this single
sin of being separated from the unity of Christ, no matter how
estimable a life he may imagine he is living, shall not have life,
but the wrath of God rests upon him.

[S]uch infants as quit the body without being baptized will be
involved in the mildest condemnation of all. That person,
therefore, greatly deceives both himself and others, who teaches
that they will not be involved in condemnation[.]

[T]here is another form of temptation, more complex in its
peril. … It originates in an appetite for knowledge. … From this
malady of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the
theatre. Hence do we proceed to search out the secret powers of
nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and
wherein men desire nothing but to know.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth,
the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion
and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions,
about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of
the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs,
stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being
certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and
dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably
giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these
topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an
embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a
Christian and laugh it to scorn. … Reckless and incompetent
expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on
their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their
mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are
not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend
their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will
try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from
memory many passages which they think support their position,
although they understand neither what they say nor the things
about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1:7]

As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none
but your blessedness, that is, with the Chair of Peter. For this, I
know, is the rock on which the Church is built. … This is the ark
of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood
prevails. … And as for heretics, I have never spared them; on the
contrary, I have seen to it in every possible way that the Church's
enemies are also my enemies.

Most firmly hold and never doubt that not only pagans, but also
all Jews, all heretics, and all schismatics who finish this life
outside of the Catholic Church, will go into the eternal fire
prepared for the devil and his angels.

The Qur'an (القرآن)
and the Hadith (الحديث)

The Dome of the Rock (مسجد قبة الصخرة) in
Jerusalem (built 692 AD), that contains numerous inscriptions that
proclaim God's uniqueness and deny that He has any son or requires
any assistance.

The
Qur'an (القرآن)

And when Allah said: O Isa, [Jesus] I am going to terminate the
period of your stay (on earth) and cause you to ascend unto Me and
purify you of those who disbelieve and make those who follow you
above those who disbelieve to the day of resurrection; then to Me
shall be your return, so l will decide between you concerning that
in which you differed.

Then because of their breaking of their covenant, and their
disbelieving in the revelations of Allah, and their slaying of the
prophets wrongfully, and their saying: Our hearts are hardened—Nay,
but Allah set a seal upon them for their disbelief, so that they
believe not save a few—
And because of their disbelief and of their speaking against Mary a
tremendous calumny;
And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of
Mary, Allah's messenger—they slew him not nor crucified him, but it
appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are
in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a
conjecture; they slew him not for certain.
But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty,
Wise.
There is not one of the People of the Scripture but will believe in
him before his death, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be a
witness against them.

O followers of the Book! [The Bible] do not exceed the limits
in your religion, and do not speak (lies) against Allah, but
(speak) the truth; the Messiah, Isa son of Marium [Jesus son of
Mary] is only an apostle of Allah and His Word which He
communicated to Marium and a spirit from Him; believe therefore in
Allah and His apostles, and say not, Three. Desist, it is better
for you; Allah is only one God; far be It from His glory that He
should have a son, whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in
the earth is His, and Allah is sufficient for a Protector.

Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah, He is the
Messiah, son of Marium; and the Messiah said: O Children of Israel!
serve Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Surely whoever associates
(others) with Allah, then Allah has forbidden to him the garden,
and his abode is the fire; and there shall be no helpers for the
unjust.
Certainly they disbelieve who say: Surely Allah is the third
(person) of the three; and there is no god but the one God, and if
they desist not from what they say, a painful chastisement shall
befall those among them who disbelieve.

And when Allah will say: O Isa son of Marium! [Jesus son of
Mary] did you say to men, Take me and my mother for two gods
besides Allah he will say: Glory be to Thee, it did not befit me
that I should say what I had no right to (say); if I had said it,
Thou wouldst indeed have known it; Thou knowest what is in my mind,
and I do not know what is in Thy mind, surely Thou art the great
Knower of the unseen things.

Then she brought him to her own folk, carrying him. They said:
O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing.
O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy
mother a harlot.
Then she pointed to him. They said: How can we talk to one who is
in the cradle, a young boy?
He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the
Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet,
And hath made me blessed wheresoever I may be, and hath enjoined
upon me prayer and almsgiving so long as I remain alive,
And (hath made me) dutiful toward her who bore me, and hath not
made me arrogant, unblest.
Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I
shall be raised alive!
Such was Jesus, son of Mary: (this is) a statement of the truth
concerning which they doubt.
It befitteth not (the Majesty of) Allah that He should take unto
Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith
unto it only: Be! and it is.
And lo! Allah is my Lord and your Lord. So serve Him. That is the
right path.
The sects among them differ: but woe unto the disbelievers from the
meeting of an awful Day.
See and hear them on the Day they come unto Us! yet the evil-doers
are today in error manifest.
And warn them of the Day of anguish when the case hath been
decided. Now they are in a state of carelessness, and they believe
not.

And when Isa son of Marium [Jesus son of Mary] said: O children
of Israel! surely I am the apostle of Allah to you, verifying that
which is before me of the Taurat and giving the good news of an
Apostle who will come after me, his name being Ahmad [Muhammad], but when he came to
them with clear arguments they said: This is clear magic.

The
Hadith (الحديث)

The Prophet said, "On the night of my Ascent to the Heaven, I
saw Moses who was a tall brown curly-haired man as if he was one of
the men of Shan'awa tribe, and I saw Jesus, a man of medium height
and moderate complexion inclined to the red and white colors and of
lank hair. I also saw Malik, the gate-keeper of the (Hell) Fire and
Ad-Dajjal [the Antichrist] amongst the
signs which Allah showed me."

The Prophet said, "On the Day of Resurrection the Believers
will assemble and say, 'Let us ask somebody to intercede for us
with our Lord.' … 'Go to Jesus, Allah's Slave, His Apostle and
Allah's Word and a Spirit coming from Him.' Jesus will say, 'I am
not fit for this undertaking, go to Muhammad the Slave of Allah
whose past and future sins were forgiven by Allah.' So they will
come to me and I will proceed till I will ask my Lord's Permission
and I will be given permission.

Islamic Inscriptions from the Dome of the Rock (مسجد قبة الصخرة)

Floor plan for the octagonal arcade of The Dome of the Rock (مسجد قبة الصخرة) in
Jerusalem (built 692 CE), that contains numerous inscriptions that
proclaim God's uniqueness and deny that He has any son or requires
any assistance.

O People of the Book! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor
utter aught concerning God save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son
of Mary, was only a Messenger of God, and His Word which He
conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and
His messengers, and say not 'Three' - Cease! (it is better for you!
- God is only One God. Far be it removed from His transcendent
majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the
heavens and all that is in the earth. And God is sufficient as
Defender.

Oh God, bless Your Messenger and Your servant Jesus son of
Mary. Peace be on him the day he was born, and the day he dies, and
the day he shall be raised alive! Such was Jesus, son of Mary,
(this is) a statement of the truth concerning which they doubt.

It befitteth not (the Majesty of) God that He should take unto
Himself a son. Glory be to Him! When He decreeth a thing, He saith
unto it only: Be! and it is. Lo! God is my Lord and your Lord. So
serve Him. That is the right path. God (Himself) is witness that
there is no God save Him.

High Middle
Ages

Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the
sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread
being changed (transsubstantiatio) by divine power into
the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the
mystery of unity we may receive of Him what He has received of us.
And this sacrament no one can effect except the priest who has been
duly ordained in accordance with the keys of the Church, which
Jesus Christ Himself gave to the Apostles and their successors.

Jews and Saracens [Muslims] of both sexes in every Christian
province must be distinguished from the Christian by a difference
of dress. On Passion Sunday and the last three days of Holy Week
they may not appear in public.

Late Middle
Ages

When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released
from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use
of every means is sanctified, even deceit, treachery, violence,
usury, prison, and death. Because order serves the good of the
community, the individual must be sacrificed for the common good.

All the world suffers from the usury of the Jews, their
monopolies and deceit. … Then as now Jews have to be reminded
intermittently anew that they were enjoying rights in any country
since they left Palestine and the Arabian desert, and subsequently
their ethical and moral doctrines as well as their deeds rightly
deserve to be exposed to criticism in whatever country they happen
to live.

Christ is not God, not the saviour of the world, but a mere
man, a sinful man, and an abominable idol. All who worship him are
abominable idolaters. And Christ did not rise again from death to
life nor did he ascend into heaven.

What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the
sake of the good and for the Christian church … a lie out of
necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be
against God, he would accept them.

When the Gospel is preached unto faith, hope, love, and
patience, God gives His wonder-working Spirit. Paul reminds the
Galatians of this. "God had not only brought you to faith by my
preaching. He had also sanctified you to bring forth the fruits of
faith. And one of the fruits of your faith was that you loved me so
devotedly that you were willing to pluck out your eyes for me." To
love a fellow-man so devotedly as to be ready to bestow upon him
money, goods, eyes in order to secure his salvation, such love is
the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

When we pay attention to reason, God seems to propose
impossible matters in the Christian Creed. To reason it seems
absurd that Christ should offer His body and blood in the Lord's
Supper; that Baptism should be the washing of regeneration; that
the dead shall rise; that Christ the Son of God was conceived in
the womb of the Virgin Mary, etc. Reason shouts that all this is
preposterous. Are you surprised that reason thinks little of faith?
Reason thinks it ludicrous that faith should be the foremost
service any person can render unto God. Let your faith supplant
reason.

What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned
people, the Jews? …
First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and
cover with dirt whatever will not burn … This is to be done in
honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we
are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such
public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his
Christians. …
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.
…
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings,
in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be
taken from them. …
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth
on pain of loss of life and limb. … Fifth, I advise that
safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews.
…
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash
and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside
for safekeeping. …
Seventh, I commend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a
distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and
Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their
brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen 3[:19]).

Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and
blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their
crime and guilty as they are. There is no question here of man's
authority; it is God who speaks, and clear it is what law he will
have kept in the church, even to the end of the world. Wherefore
does he demand of us a so extreme severity, if not to show us that
due honor is not paid him, so long as we set not his service above
every human consideration, so that we spare not kin, nor blood of
any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His
glory.

John Calvin's
justification of torture and execution for heretics. John Marshall,
John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture
(Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History), Cambridge
University Press, 2006, ISBN 0-521-65114-X p. 325.

After he [Servetus] had been recognized, I thought he should be
detained. My friend Nicolas
summoned him on a capital charge, offering himself as a security
according to the lex talionis. On the
following day he adduced against him forty written charges. He at
first sought to evade them. Accordingly we were summoned. He
impudently reviled me, just as if he regarded me as obnoxious to
him. I answered him as he deserved … of the man’s effrontery I will
say nothing; but such was his madness that he did not hesitate to
say that devils possessed divinity; yea, that many gods were in
individual devils, inasmuch as a deity had been substantially
communicated to those equally with wood and stone. I hope that
sentence of death will at least be passed on him; but I desired
that the severity of the punishment be mitigated.

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His
attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without
any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in
just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.

The Age of Reason
(Seventeenth Century)

I have often wondered, that persons who make a boast of
professing the Christian religion, namely, love, joy, peace,
temperance, and charity to all men, should quarrel with such
rancorous animosity, and display daily towards one another such
bitter hatred, that this, rather than the virtues they claim, is
the readiest criterion of their faith. Matters have long since come
to such a pass, that one can only pronounce a man Christian, Turk,
Jew, or Heathen, by his general appearance and attire, by his
frequenting this or that place of worship, or employing the
phraseology of a particular sect—as for manner of life, it is in
all cases the same.

Had it been published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor
men, taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning,
should conquer the world to the cross, it might have been thought
an illusion against all reason of men; yet we know it was
undertaken and accomplished by them.

Stephen Charnock, Discourses
Upon the Existence and Attributes of God (1682) On the
Existence of God

Don't you see that the appalling history of sectarianism,
persecution, heresy hunting, shows you that this way of thinking
about the world is intrinsically unsound?

The universe, the whole mass of all things that are, is
corporeal, that is to say body, and hath dimensions of magnitude,
length breadth and depth. Every part of the universe is body and
that which is not body is no part of the universe. And because the
universe is all, that which is no part of it is nothing.
Consequently, nowhere.

[Christianity] is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most
absurd and the most bloody religion which has ever infected this
world. Your Majesty will do the human race an eternal service by
extirpating this infamous superstition, I do not say among the
rabble, who are not worthy of being enlightened and who are apt for
every yoke; I say among honest people, among men who think, among
those who wish to think. … My one regret in dying is that I cannot
aid you in this noble enterprise, the finest and most respectable
which the human mind can point out.

God's power is infinite, Whatever he wills is executed; But
neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore he does not
will their happiness. Epicurus' old questions are yet unanswered.
Is he both able and willing to prevent evil? Then whence cometh
evil?

If we go back to the beginning, we shall find that ignorance
and fear created the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit
adorned them; that weakness worships them; that credulity preserves
them and that custom, respect and tyranny support them in order to
make the blindness of men serve their own interests. If the
ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, the knowledge of nature is
calculated to destroy them.

In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State
opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became
loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument,
raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined,
imprisoned: yet we have not advanced one inch towards
uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make
one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support
roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is
inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess
probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but
one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that
one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into
the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect
this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable
instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged;
and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it
ourselves. But every state, says an inquisitor, has established
some religion. "No two, say I, have established the same." Is this
a proof of the infallibility of establishments? Our sister states
of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without
any establishment at all.

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of
Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less
in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and
servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and
persecution.

What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had
on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a
spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many
instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political
tyranny: in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the
liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public
liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient
auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure &
perpetuate it needs them not.

Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object
[religion]. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in
favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any
other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important,
& the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other
hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which
weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat,
and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.
Question with boldness even the existence of a god;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of
reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally
examine first the religion of your own country. Read the bible
then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. … But those facts
in the bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined
with more care, and under a variety of faces. … Examine
upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that
evidence is so strong as that its falsehood would be more
improbable than a change in the laws of nature in the case he
relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun
stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or
Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of
statues, beasts, etc. But it is said that the writer of that book
was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of
his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your
inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are
astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature
that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have
stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated
animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have
resumed its revolution, & that without a second general
prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence
which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will
next read the new testament. It is the history of a personage
called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions I. of those
who say he was begotten by god, born of a virgin, suspended &
reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into
heaven: and 2. of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth,
of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without
pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, & was
Punished capitally for sedition by being gibbeted according to the
Roman law which punished the first commission of that offence by
whipping, & the second by exile or death in furcâ. …
Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of it's
consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will
find incitements to virtue in the comfort & pleasantness you
feel in it's exercise, and the love of others which it will procure
you. If you find reason to believe there is a god, a
consciousness that you are acting under his eye, & that he
approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there
be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases
the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you will
be comforted by a belief of his aid and love. In fine, I repeat
that you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, & neither
believe nor reject anything because any other persons, or
description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own
reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are
answerable not for the rightness but uprightness of the decision. I
forgot to observe when speaking of the new testament that
you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom
a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us to be
Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists.
Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration as much
as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own
reason, & not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of
these are lost. There are some however still extant, collected by
Fabricius which I will endeavor to get & send you.

The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was
intimately connected with the second coming of Christ. As the works
of the creation had been finished in six days, their duration in
their present state, according to a tradition which was attributed
to the prophet Elijah, was fixed to six thousand years. By the same
analogy it was inferred that this long period of labour and
contention, which was now almost elapsed, would be succeeded by a
joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; and that Christ, with the
triumphant band of the saints and the elect who had escaped death,
or who had been miraculously revived, would reign upon earth till
the time appointed for the last and general resurrection. So
pleasing was this hope to the mind of believers, that the new
Jerusalem, the seat of this blissful kingdom, was quickly adorned
with all the gayest colours of the imagination. … Though it might
not be universally received, it appears to have been the reigning
sentiment of the orthodox believers; and it seems so well adapted
to the desires and apprehensions of mankind, that it must have
contributed in a very considerable degree to the progress of the
Christian faith. But when the edifice of the church was almost
completed, the temporary support was laid aside. The doctrine of
Christ's reign upon earth was at first treated as a profound
allegory, was considered by degrees as a doubtful and useless
opinion, and was at length rejected as the absurd invention of
heresy and fanaticism. A mysterious prophecy, which still forms a
part of the sacred canon, but which was thought to favour the
exploded sentiment, has very narrowly escaped the proscription of
the church.

Whilst the happiness and glory of a temporal reign were
promised to the disciples of Christ, the most dreadful calamities
were denounced against an unbelieving world. … A regular series was
prepared of all the moral and physical evils which can afflict a
flourishing nation; intestine discord, and the invasion of the
fiercest barbarians from the unknown regions of the North;
pestilence and famine, comets and eclipses, earthquakes and
inundations. The calmest and most intrepid sceptic could not refuse
to acknowledge that the destruction of the present system of the
world by fire was in itself extremely probable. The Christian, who
founded his belief much less on the fallacious arguments of reason
than on the authority of tradition and the interpretation of
Scripture, expected it with terror and confidence as a certain and
approaching event; and as his mind was perpetually filled with the
solemn idea, he considered every disaster that happened to the
empire as an infallible symptom of an expiring world.

The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans,
on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth,
seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age. But
the primitive church, whose faith was of a much firmer consistence,
delivered over, without hesitation, to eternal torture the far
greater part of the human species.

The chaste severity of the fathers in whatever related to the
commerce of the two sexes flowed from the same principle—their abhorrence of every
enjoyment which might gratify the sensual and degrade the spiritual
nature of man. It was their favourite opinion, that if Adam had
preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived for
ever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of
vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and
immortal beings. The use of marriage was permitted only to his
fallen posterity, as a necessary expedient to continue the human
species, and as a restraint, however imperfect, on the natural
licentiousness of desire. The enumeration of the very whimsical
laws which they most circumstantially imposed on the marriage-bed
would force a smile from the young and a blush from the fair. It
was their unanimous sentiment that a first marriage was adequate to
all the purposes of nature and of society. The sensual connection
was refined into a resemblance of the mystic union of Christ with
his church, and was pronounced to be indissoluble either by divorce
or by death. The practice of second nuptials was branded with the
name of a legal adultery; and the persons who were guilty of so
scandalous an offence against Christian purity were soon excluded
from the honours, and even from the arms, of the church. Since
desire was imputed as a crime, and marriage was tolerated as a
defect, it was consistent with the same principles to consider a
state of celibacy as the nearest approach to the Divine perfection.

The names of Seneca, of the elder and the younger Pliny, of
Tacitus, of Plutarch, of Galen, of the slave Epictetus, and of the
emperor Marcus Antoninus, adorn the age in which they flourished,
and exalt the dignity of human nature. They filled with glory their
respective stations, either in active or contemplative life; their
excellent understandings were improved by study; philosophy had
purified their minds from the prejudices of the popular
superstition; and their days were spent in the pursuit of truth and
the practice of virtue. Yet all these sages (it is no less an
object of surprise than of concern) overlooked or rejected the
perfection of the Christian system. Their language or their silence
equally discover their contempt for the growing sect which in their
time had diffused itself over the Roman empire. Those among them
who condescend to mention the Christians consider them only as
obstinate and perverse enthusiasts, who exacted an implicit
submission to their mysterious doctrines, without being able to
produce a single argument that could engage the attention of men of
sense and learning.

[H]ow shall we excuse the supine inattention of the Pagan and
philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by the
hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses?
During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first
disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by
innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick
were healed, the dead were raised, daemons were expelled, and the
laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the
church.
… Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a
celebrated province of the Roman empire, was involved in a
preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous event,
which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the
devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and
history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder
Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received
the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these
philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great
phenomena of Nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses,
which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and
the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which
the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe.

But the most interesting conquest of the Seljukian Turks was
that of Jerusalem, which soon became the theatre of nations. In
their capitulation with Omar, the inhabitants had stipulated the
assurance of their religion and property; … and the sepulchre of
Christ, with the church of the Resurrection, was still left in the
hands of his votaries. Of these votaries, the most numerous and
respectable portion were strangers to Jerusalem: the pilgrimages to
the Holy Land had been stimulated, rather than suppressed, by the
conquest of the Arabs; … The harmony of prayer in so many various
tongues, the worship of so many nations in the common temple of
their religion, might have afforded a spectacle of edification and
peace; but the zeal of the Christian sects was imbittered by hatred
and revenge; and in the kingdom of a suffering Messiah, who had
pardoned his enemies, they aspired to command and persecute their
spiritual brethren.

About four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar,
the holy city was rescued from the Mahometan yoke. In the pillage
of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect
the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of the
great mosque, seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver,
rewarded the diligence, and displayed the generosity, of Tancred.
A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to
the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke but neither age
nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage: they indulged
themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre; and the infection
of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy
thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews
had been burnt in their synagogue, they could still reserve a
multitude of captives, whom interest or lassitude persuaded them to
spare. … Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts,
and in an humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst
the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered
the Savior of the world; and bedewed with tears of joy and
penitence the monument of their redemption. … nor shall I
believe that the most ardent in slaughter and rapine were the
foremost in the procession to the holy sepulchre.

Let divines and philosophers, statemen and patriots, unite
their endeavours to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men
with the importance of educating little boys and girls; of
inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…in
short leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues
of the Christian system….

What have we learned from this false thing called "revealed
religion"? Absolutely nothing that is useful to man, and everything
that is dishonorable to God. What does the Bible teach us?—rapine,
cruelty, and murder. What does the New Testament teach us?—to
believe that God had sex with a woman engaged to be married. The
belief in this debauchery is what is called faith.

People in general do not realize the wickedness that is in this
so-called word of God. They are raised with the superstitious ideas
that the Bible is true and good, and don't allow themselves to
doubt it. The ideas that they form from the generosity of God are
carried over to the book that they have been taught to believe was
written by his authority. Good heavens, it is something else
entirely! It is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy. What can
be a greater blasphemy than to say that the wickedness of man was
done by the order of God?

The most horrible wickedness and cruelties, and the greatest
miseries that have troubled the human race began with this thing
called revelation, or revealed religion. … It would be far, far
better for us to let a thousand devils roam the world, and publicly
preach the doctrine of devils (if there were such a thing, which
there isn't), than to let one impostor and monster such a Moses,
Joshua, Samuel or the Bible prophets come speaking the so-called
word of God, and causing men to believe it.

Every national church or religion has established itself by
pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain
individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus
Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as
if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call
revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their
Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians
say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the
Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an
angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of
unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in
which none of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put
Satan into the pit—let him out again—given him a triumph over the
whole creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, these
Christian mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together.
They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be
at once both God and man, and also the Son of God, celestially
begotten, on purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in
her longing had eaten an apple.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens
to put me in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself,
and pay it for me. But if I have committed a crime, every
circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the
innocent for the guilty even if the innocent would offer itself. To
suppose justice to do this, is to destroy the principle of its
existence, which is the thing itself. It is then no longer justice.
It is indiscriminate revenge.

As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a
species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes
to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up
chiefly of man-ism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism
as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his Maker
an opaque body, which it calls a redeemer[.]

The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles,
related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with
Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain; and
to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him
and promising to him all the kingdoms of the world. How
happened it that he did not discover America? or is it only with
kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest.

Here then is the whole story, foolish as it is, of this child
and this virgin; and it is upon the barefaced perversion of this
story that the book of Matthew, and the impudence and sordid
interest of priests in later times, have founded a theory, which
they call the gospel; and have applied this story to signify the
person they call Jesus Christ; begotten, they say, by a ghost, whom
they call holy, on the body of a woman, engaged in marriage, and
afterwards married, whom they call a virgin, seven hundred years
after this foolish story was told; a theory which, speaking for
myself, I hesitate not to believe, and to say, is as fabulous and
as false as God is true. …
It is not then the existence or the non-existence, of the persons
that I trouble myself about; it is the fable of Jesus Christ, as
told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine
raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it
is told, is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young
woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she
is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under the
impious pretence, (Luke i. 35,) that "the Holy Ghost shall come
upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee."
Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with
her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost. This is putting
the story into intelligible language, and when told in this manner,
there is not a priest but must be ashamed to own it

Matthew says, that the angel that was sitting upon the stone on
the outside of the sepulchre told the two Marys that Christ was
risen, and that the women went away quickly. Mark says,
that the women, upon seeing the stone rolled away, and wondering at
it, went into the sepulchre, and that it was the angel
that was sitting within on the right side, that told them
so. Luke says, it was the two angels that were standing up; and
John says, it was Jesus Christ himself that told it to Mary
Magdalene; and that she did not go into the sepulchre, but only
stooped down and looked in.
Now, if the writers of these four books had gone into a court of
justice to prove an alibi, (for it is of the nature of an
alibi that is here attempted to be proved, namely, the absence of a
dead body by supernatural means,) and had they given their evidence
in the same contradictory manner as it is here given, they would
have been in danger of having their ears cropt for perjury, and
would have justly deserved it. Yet this is the evidence, and these
are the books, that have been imposed upon the world as being given
by divine inspiration, and as the unchangeable word of God.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there
is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man,
more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than
this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too
impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it
renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics.
As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism; and as a
means of wealth, the avarice of priests; but so far as respects the
good of man in general, it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

As the government of the United States is not, in any
sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in
itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or
tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] … it is declared … that no
pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an
interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. …
The United States is not a Christian nation any more than
it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.

[W]hen the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure
from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he
had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a
belief in the Christian religion and they thought they should so
pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly
whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However
[Dr. Rush] observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He
answered every article of their address particularly except that,
which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say
a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his
valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned
his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign
influence of the Christian religion. I know that Gouverneur Morris,
who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so,
has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that
system than he himself did.

The
Nineteenth Century

In his last moments he cries out, "My God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me!" What conclusion is it natural to draw from this
distressing exclamation? It appears to be this, that on the part of
Jesus Christ, there was a virtual renunciation of his confidence in
the Creator; and on the supposition that there was originally a
concerted plan of execution well understood by both the parties,
the fulfilment of it seems here to have been relinquished, and the
beneficial effects annihilated. On the part of Jesus, it is saying,
"I have been deceived in this undertaking. I did not expect that I
should have been forsaken in this hour of my greatest distress; but
I rested with confidence on eternal wisdom, for a timely escape
from this wretched misfortune." On the part of the Father, there is
a want of attention and support in this trying hour. He forsakes
his beloved Son; he gives him up to the murderous fury of
vindictive enemies; and neither the one nor the other of the
parties exhibits that spirit of fortitude and constancy which might
justly have been expected on so interesting an occasion. The
reflecting mind concludes, therefore, that the whole is but a
fiction, and that no such stipulation ever took place between the
man Jesus Christ, and the Creator of the world.

The disadvantages under which his doctrines appear are
remarkable... Like Socrates & Epictetus, he wrote nothing himself... But he
had not, like them, a Xenophon or an Arrian to write for him. ...
According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to enlighten
and reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the jealousy &
combination of the altar and the throne, at about 33 years of age,
his reason having not yet attained the maximum of its energy, nor
the course of his preaching, which was but of 3 years at most,
presented occasions for developing a complete system of morals.
Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective as a
whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us
mutilated, misstated, & often unintelligible.... They have been
still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatising
followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating &
perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the
mysticisms of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties,
& obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men
to reject the whole in disgust, & to view Jesus himself as an
impostor.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is
presented to us, which, if filled up in the true style and spirit
of the rich fragments he left us, would be the most perfect and
sublime that has ever been taught by man. ... His moral doctrines,
relating to kindred & friends, were more pure & perfect
than those of the most correct of the philosophers, and greatly
more so than those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both in
inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and
friends, to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering
all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace,
common wants and common aids. A development of this head will
evince the peculiar superiority of the system of Jesus over all
others.

[E]ven while admitting the existence of the theological God,
and the reality of his so discordant attributes which they impute
to him, one can conclude nothing to authorize the conduct or the
cult which one is prescribed to render him. … If he is infinitely
good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely
wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows
all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If
he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear
that he will punish the creatures that he has, filled with
weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he
have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him,
how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the
blind, to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If
he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his
decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? IF
HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED? If the knowledge
of a God is the most necessary, why is it not the most evident and
the clearest.

Since its introduction, human nature has made great progress,
and society experienced great changes; and in this advanced
condition of the world, Christianity, instead of losing its
application and importance, is found to be more and more congenial
and adapted to man's nature and wants. Men have outgrown the other
institutions of that period when Christianity appeared, its
philosophy, its modes of warfare, its policy, its public and
private economy; but Christianity has never shrunk as intellect has
opened, but has always kept in advance of men's faculties, and
unfolded nobler views in proportion as they have ascended. The
highest powers and affections which our nature has developed, find
more than adequate objects in this religion. Christianity is indeed
peculiarly fitted to the more improved stages of society, to the
more delicate sensibilities of refined minds, and especially to
that dissatisfaction with the present state, which always grows
with the growth of our moral powers and affections.

The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved
independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful
Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite…And what were these general
Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in
which all these Sects were United:…Now I will avow, that I then
believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of
Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and
Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as
unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.

Indeed, Mr. Jefferson, what could be invented to debase the
ancient Christianism which Greeks, Romans, Hebrews and Christian
factions, above all the Catholics, have not fraudulently imposed
upon the public? Miracles after miracles have rolled down in
torrents.

God … created this Speck of Dirt and the human Species for his
glory: and with the deliberate design of making nine tenths of our
Species miserable forever, for his glory. This is the doctrine of
Christian Theologians in general: ten to one.

We have now, it Seems, a National Bible Society, to propagate
the King James's Bible through all Nations. Would it not be better
to apply the pious SubScriptions, to purify Christendom from the
Corruptions of Christianity; than to propagate those corruptions in
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America!

Do you think a Protestant Popedom is annihilated in America? Do
you recollect, or have you ever attended to the ecclesiastical
Strifes in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and every part of New
England? What a mercy it is that these people cannot whip and crop,
and pillory and roast, as yet in the U.S.! If they could they
would.

The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds,
Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish
trumpery that we find in Christianity.

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal
example of abuses of grief which the history of mankind has
preserved—the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief
has produced.

They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be
exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly;
for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against
every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they
have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

Thomas
Jefferson on members of the clergy who sought to establish some
form of "official" Christianity in the U.S. government. Letter to
Dr. Benjamin Rush (September 23, 1800); The first portion of this
statement has also been widely paraphrased as "The clergy believe
that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to
their schemes, and they believe rightly."

The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ
levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation,
saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might
build up an artificial system, which might, from its
indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for
their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence.
The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are
within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes
have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for
this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.

Cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and
which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound,
of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his
constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires.

49: Some of them that stood there, when they heard that, said,
This man calleth for Elias.

50: And straightway one of them ran, and took a spunge, and
filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to
drink.

51: The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come
to save him.

52: Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded
up the ghost.

53: And many women were there beholding afar off, which
followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering unto him:

54: Among which was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of
James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee's children.

55: The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that
the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day,
(for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their
legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away.

56: Then came the soldiers, and brake the legs of the first,
and of the other which was crucified with him.

57: But when they came to Jesus, and saw that he was dead
already, they brake not his legs:

58: But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and
forthwith came there out blood and water.

59: And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of
Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he
might take away the body of Jesus: and Pilate gave him leave. He
came therefore, and took the body of Jesus.

60: And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to
Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an
hundred pound weight.

61: Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen
clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.

62: Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden;
and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein was never man yet
laid.

63: There laid they Jesus,

64: And rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and
departed.

The priests have so disfigured the simple religion of Jesus
that no one who reads the sophistications they have engrafted on
it, from the jargon of Plato, of Aristotle & other mystics,
would conceive these could have been fathered on the sublime
preacher of the sermon on the mount.

I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials,
which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his
doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging
them on the pages of d blank book, in a certain order of time or
subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never
seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is
to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from
the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and
preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic
dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have
compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the
comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious
ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not
recognize one feature.

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal
example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has
preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of
grief has produced!

I may say Christianity itself divided into it's thousands also,
who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning
and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them
understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the
human mind[.]

But the greatest of all the reformers of the depraved religion
of his own country, was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what
is really his from the rubbish in which it is buried, easily
distinguished by its lustre from the dross of his biographers, and
as separable from that as the diamond from the dunghill[.] … The
establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this
benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of
imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems,[footnote:
e.g. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the
creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his
resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the
Eucharist, the Trinity; original sin, atonement, regeneration,
election, orders of Hierarchy, etc. —T.J.] invented by
ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered
by him, is a most desirable object, and one to which
Priestley has successfully devoted his labors and learning. It
would in time, it is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the
heresies of bigotry and fanaticism which have so long triumphed
over human reason, and so generally and deeply afflicted mankind;
but this work is to be begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff
of the historians of his life.

My aim in that was, to justify the character of Jesus
against the fictions of his pseudo-followers [the authors of the
Gospels], which have exposed him to the inference of being an
impostor. For if we could believe that he really countenanced the
follies, the falsehoods and the charlatanisms which his biographers
father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations and
theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the
latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound
mind, that he was an impostor. I give no credit to their
falsifications of his actions and doctrines, and to rescue his
character, the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in
reading every other historian. When Livy and Siculus, for example,
tell us things which coincide with our experience of the order of
nature, we credit them on their word, and place their narrations
among the records of credible history. But when they tell us of
calves speaking, of statues sweating blood, and other things
against the course of nature, we reject these as fables not
belonging to history. … That Jesus did not mean to impose
himself on mankind as the son of God, physically speaking,
I have been convinced by the writings of men more learned than
myself in that lore.

Thomas
Jefferson, Letter to William Short,
August 4, 1820, on his reason for compiling the Syllabus of an
Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus. Published in
Thomas Jefferson: Writings, Merrill D. Peterson, ed., New
York: Library of America, 1994, pp. 1435–1440.[26]

His [Jesus'] object was the reformation of some articles in the
religion of the Jews, as taught by Moses. That sect had presented
for the object of their worship, a being of terrific character,
cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

Thomas
Jefferson, Letter to William Short,
August 4, 1820, on his reason for compiling the Syllabus of an
Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus. Published in
Thomas Jefferson: Writings, Merrill D. Peterson, ed., New
York: Library of America, 1994, pp. 1435–1440.[27]

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the
happiness of man.

1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.

2, That there is a future state of rewards and
punishments.

3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as
thyself, is the sum of religion.

These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the
religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing
dogmas of Calvin.

1. That there are three Gods.

2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are
nothing.

3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the
proposition, the more merit in its faith.

4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.

5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to
be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of
the former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.

Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He
who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the
impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I say these
are the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into
the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are
mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion
made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from
Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven
thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily
rejected the supposed author himself, with the horrors so falsely
imputed to him. Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as
pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would
now have been Christian. I rejoice that in this blessed
country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed
and conscience to neither kings nor priests[.]

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the
Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be
classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of
Jupiter.

I thank you, Sir, for the copy you were so kind as to send me
of the revd. Mr. Bancroft's Unitarian sermons. I have read them
with great satisfaction, and always rejoice in efforts to restore
us to primitive Christianity, in all the simplicity in which it
came from the lips of Jesus. Had it never been sophisticated by the
subtleties of Commentators, nor paraphrased into meanings totally
foreign to it's character, it would at this day have been the
religion of the whole civilized world. But the metaphysical
abstractions of Athanasius, and the maniac ravings of Calvin,
tinctured plentifully with the foggy dreams of Plato, have so
loaded it with absurdities and incomprehensibilities, as to drive
into infidelity men who had not time, patience, or opportunity to
strip it of it's meretricious trappings[.]

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read the
Apocalypse, and I then considered it merely the ravings of a
maniac, no more worthy, nor capable of explanation than the
incoherences of our own nightly dreams. … what has no meaning
admits no explanation.

We think ourselves possessed, or, at least, we boast that we
are so, of liberty of conscience on all subjects, and of the right
of free inquiry and private judgment in all cases, and yet how far
are we from these exalted privileges in fact! There exists, I
believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it
blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books
of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most
countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the
rack, or the wheel. In England itself it is punished by boring
through the tongue with a red-hot poker. In America it is not
better; even in our own Massachusetts, which I believe, upon the
whole, is as temperate and moderate in religious zeal as most of
the States, a law was made in the latter end of the last century,
repealing the cruel punishments of the former laws, but
substituting fine and imprisonment upon all those blasphemers upon
any book of the Old Testament or New. Now, what free inquiry, when
a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for
adducing any argument for investigating into the divine authority
of those books? Who would run the risk of translating Dupuis? But I
cannot enlarge upon this subject, though I have it much at heart. I
think such laws a great embarrassment, great obstructions to the
improvement of the human mind. Books that cannot bear examination,
certainly ought not to be established as divine inspiration by
penal laws. It is true, few persons appear desirous to put such
laws in execution, and it is also true that some few persons are
hardy enough to venture to depart from them. But as long as they
continue in force as laws, the human mind must make an awkward and
clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed.
The substance and essence of Christianity, as I understand it, is
eternal and unchangeable, and will bear examination forever, but it
has been mixed with extraneous ingredients, which I think will not
bear examination, and they ought to be separated.

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time;
they therefore who are decrying the christian religion, whose
morality is so sublime and pure... are undermining the solid
foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free
government.

The real security of Christianity is to be found in its
benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human
heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to
the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it
bears to every house of mourning, in the light with which it
brightens the great mystery of the grave.

Why is it that, next to the birthday of the saviour of the
world, your most joyous and venerated festival returns on this day?
Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the
nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the saviour?
That it forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel
dispensation? Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first
organized the social compact on the foundation of the redeemer's
mission on earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government
upon the first precepts of Christianity?

The law given from Sinai was a civil and municipal as well as a
moral and religious code…

John
Quincy AdamsLetters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the
Bible and its Teachings (Auburn: James M. Alden, 1850) letter
V, p. 61

"It is a refiner as well as a purifier of the heart; it imparts
correctness of perception, delicacy of sentiment, and all those
nicer shades of thought and feeling which constitute elegance of
mind."

Mrs. John Sanford, The Lady's Manual of Moral and
Intellectual Culture (1854) Causes of Female Influence

There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. They
may wait awhile … perhaps a generation or two … dropping off by
degrees. … A new order shall arise and they shall be the new
priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. The churches
built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women.
Through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new
breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events
and things. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
today, symptoms of the past and future. … They shall not deign to
defend immorality or God or the perfection of things or liberty or
the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in
America and and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God
would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the
express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies
of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt
of sin. The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the
sinner’s part. That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved
Son, is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made. … The
material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin
when it was shed upon ‘the accursed tree,’ than when it was flowing
in his veins as he went daily about his Father’s business. … His
disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the
sepulchre, whereas he was alive[.]

It is plain that God does not employ drugs or hygiene, nor
provide them for human use; else Jesus would have recommended and
employed them in his healing. The sick are more deplorably lost
than the sinning, if the sick cannot rely on God for help and the
sinning can. … The universal belief in physics weighs against the
high and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This erroneous
general belief, which sustains medicine and produces all medical
results, works against Christian Science[.] … If we would heal by
the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of spiritual healing under
the napkin of its form[.] … The tender word and Christian
encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and
the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories,
stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which
are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame
with divine Love.

The theory of three person in one God (that is, a personal
Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one
ever-present I AM. … Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself
declared, but is the Son of God.

We teach and define that it is a dogma divinely revealed: that
the Roman pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in
discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by
virtue of his supreme apostolic authority he defines a doctrine
regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by
the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, is possessed
of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that
his Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith
and morals; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman
pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of
the Church.

Vatican Council, (24 April 1870)

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
with the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
forward into battle see his banners go!

I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great
intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which
no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean,
petty—I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.

Christianity, above all, consoles; but there are naturally
happy souls who do not need consolation. Consequently, Christianity
begins by making such souls unhappy, for otherwise it would have no
power over them.

It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you
wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their
posterity, may become white, delightsome and just.

Joseph
Smith, in an unpublished 17 July 1831 polygamy revelation
quoted in an 1861 letter from W.W. Phelps to Brigham Young. In
the 8 December 1831 Ohio Star, Ezra Booth wrote of a
revelation directing Mormon elders to marry with the
`natives'.

The Book of Mormon
(1830)

And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the
land of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen
vessel, who shall be overshadowed and conceive by the power of the
Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God.

And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to
be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold,
I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and
he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles.
And the reason why he ceaseth to do miracles among the children of
men is because that they dwindle in unbelief, and depart from the
right way, and know not the God in whom they should trust.
Behold, I say unto you that whoso believeth in Christ, doubting
nothing, whatsoever he shall ask the Father in the name of Christ
it shall be granted him; and this promise is unto all, even unto
the ends of the earth.

And he had caused the cursing to come upon them [the Lamanites, or Native Americans], yea, even
a sore cursing, because of their iniquity … wherefore, as they were
white, and exceeding fair and delightsome, that they might not be
enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness
to come upon them.

The gospel of Jesus Christ shall be declared among them [the
Native Americans] … [a]nd then shall they rejoice; … and their
scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many
generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a
white and a delightsome people.

Behold, that great city Zarahemla have I burned with fire, and
the inhabitants thereof.
And behold, that great city Moroni have I caused to be sunk in the
depths of the sea, and the inhabitants thereof to be drowned.
And behold, that great city Moronihah have I covered with earth,
…
And behold, the city of Gilgal have I caused to be sunk, and the
inhabitants thereof to be buried up in the depths of the
earth;
Yea, and the city of Onihah and the inhabitants thereof, and the
city of Mocum and the inhabitants thereof, and the city of
Jerusalem and the inhabitants thereof; and waters have I caused to
come up in the stead thereof, to hide their wickedness and
abominations from before my face, …
And behold, the city of Gadiandi, and the city of Gadiomnah, and
the city of Jacob, and the city of Gimgimno, all these have I
caused to be sunk, …
that great city Jacobugath, which was inhabited by the people of
king Jacob, have I caused to be burned with fire …
the city of Laman, and the city of Josh, and the city of Gad, and
the city of Kishkumen, have I caused to be burned with fire, and
the inhabitants thereof, because of their wickedness in casting out
the prophets, and stoning those whom I did send to declare unto
them concerning their wickedness and their abominations.
And because they did cast them all out, that there were none
righteous among them, I did send down fire and destroy them,
…
And many great destructions have I caused to come upon this land,
and upon this people, …
Behold, I am Jesus Christ the Son of God.

Doctrine and Covenants
(1835)

Hearken, O ye elders of my church, saith the Lord your God, who
have assembled yourselves together, according to my commandments,
in this land, which is the land of Missouri, which is the land
which I have appointed and consecrated for the gathering of the
saints.
Wherefore, this is the land of promise, and the place for the city
of Zion.
And thus saith the Lord your God, if you will receive wisdom here
is wisdom. Behold, the place which is now called Independence is
the center place; and a spot for the temple is lying westward, upon
a lot which is not far from the courthouse.

Joseph
Smith's revelation that that Jesus will come to Independence,
Missouri when he returns to reign on earth, The Doctrine and Covenants,
57:1–3,
revelation through Joseph Smith, in Zion, Jackson County, Missouri
(July 20, 1831).

Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph,
that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and
understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as
touching the principle and doctrine of their having many
wives and concubines—
Behold, and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer thee as
touching this matter.
Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions
which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law
revealed unto them must obey the same.
For behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting
covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned;
for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into
my glory. …
if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new
and everlasting covenant, and it is sealed unto them by the Holy
Spirit of promise, by him who is anointed, unto whom I have
appointed this power and the keys of this priesthood …
Then shall they be gods, because they have no end …
to know the only wise and true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
he hath sent. I am he. Receive ye, therefore, my law.
…
God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And
why did she do it? Because this was the law; and from Hagar sprang
many people. This, therefore, was fulfilling, among other things,
the promises. …
Was Abraham, therefore, under condemnation? Verily I say unto you,
Nay; for I, the Lord, commanded it. …
Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was
accounted unto him for righteousness, because they were given unto
him, and he abode in my law; as Isaac also and Jacob did none other
things than that which they were commanded; and because they did
none other things than that which they were commanded, they have
entered into their exaltation, according to the promises, and sit
upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods.
David also received many wives and concubines, and also
Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants,
from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did
they sin save in those things which they received not of me.
…
David's wives and concubines were given unto him of me
…
And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all
those that have been given unto my servant Joseph …
Let no one, therefore, set on my servant Joseph; for I will justify
him …
as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man
espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give
her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins,
and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot
commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit
adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one
else.And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he
cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given
unto him; therefore is he justified. …
[T]hen shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be
destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; … if
she receive not this law … she then becomes the transgressor; and
he is exempt[.]

Verily, verily, saith the Lord your Redeemer … [I]t is my will,
that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites [Native Americans],
that their posterity may become white, delightsome, and Just.

The Pearl of Great Price
(1888)

… I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of
them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great
ones which were near unto it; And the Lord said unto me: These are
the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because
it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one
to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon
which thou standest. … Kolob was after the manner of the Lord,
according to its times and seasons in the revolutions thereof; that
one revolution was a day unto the Lord, after his manner of
reckoning, it being one thousand years according to the time
appointed unto that whereon thou standest. This is the reckoning of
the Lord's time, according to the reckoning of Kolob.

The
Twentieth Century

Nearly all the Latin Fathers are Africans - Tertullian of
Carthage, the Numid Arnobius of Sicca and his pupil Lactantius,
Saint Cyprian of Carthage, the African Marius Victorinus, the
Berber Saint Augustine, in short, all this glorious vanguard of
Latin patristic culture. What splendid gifts these were from Africa
to the Church of Rome while the latter had only the works of Saint
Ambrose and of Saint Jerome to put in the Balance !

Etienne Gilson, The Philosopher
and Theology (1960), Random House New York, 1962,
pp.195-196

The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of
Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianty's illegitimate child. Both
are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of
religion was introduced into the world by Christianity. Bolshevism
practices a lie of the same nature, when it claims to bring liberty
to men, whereas in reality it seeks only to enslave them. In the
ancient world the relations between men and gods were founded on
instinctive respect. It was a world enlightened by the idea of
tolerance. Christianity was the first creed in the world to
exterminate its adversaries in the name of love. Its key note is
intolerance.

Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of
slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the
very conditions confronting us to-day. … The rulers of the earth
have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian
religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave
nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They
know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings
is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than
the club or the gun.

Everywhere and always, since its very inception, Christianity
has turned the earth into a vale of tears; always it has made of
life a weak, diseased thing, always it has instilled fear in man,
turning him into a dual being, whose life energies are spent in the
struggle between body and soul. In decrying the body as something
evil, the flesh as the tempter to everything that is sinful, man
has mutilated his being in the vain attempt to keep his soul pure,
while his body rotted away from the injuries and tortures inflicted
upon it.
The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the
Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the
earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for
pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the
entry into heaven.

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your
Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent
Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus
Christ that says it's not possible to worship both Mammon and God
at the same time.

Mohandas Gandhi as quoted by William
Rees-Mogg in The Times [London] (4 April 2005). Gandhi here makes
reference to a statement of Jesus: “No servant can serve two
masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or
else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot
serve God and mammon." (Luke 16:13)

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Saviour as
a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness,
surrounded by a few followers, recognised these Jews for what they
were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth!
was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love
as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells
us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to
drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How
terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison.
Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognise
more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that
He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no
duty to allow my self to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a
fighter for truth and justice...and if there is anything which
could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress
that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own
people.

The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen
hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the
Jews for what they were. … I recognize the representatives of this
race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am
thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of
schools and public functions.

We began to stir against slavery. Hearts grew soft, here,
there, and yonder. There was no place in the land where the seeker
could not find some small budding sign of pity for the slave. No
place in all the land but one—the pulpit. It yielded at last; it
always does. It fought a strong and stubborn fight, and then did
what it always does, joined the procession—at the tail end. Slavery
fell. The slavery text remained; the practice changed, that was
all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. the
Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore
the Church, after eight hundred years, gathered up its halters,
thumb-screws, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in
earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries
and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and
armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their
foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as
witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or
to cry. Who discovered that there was no such thing as a witch—the
priest, the parson? No, these never discover anything. … There are
no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has changed.
Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation is gone,
but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties are
gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them remain.

Christ says, "The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and
they shall gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and
them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire;
there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth"; and He goes on about
the wailing and gnashing of teeth. It comes in one verse after
another, and it is quite manifest to the reader that there is a
certain pleasure in contemplating wailing and gnashing of teeth, or
else it would not occur so often. Then you all, of course, remember
about the sheep and the goats; how at the second coming He is going
to divide the sheep from the goats, and He is going to say to the
goats: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." He
continues: "And these shall go away into everlasting fire." Then He
says again, "If thy hand offend thee, cut it off; it is better for
thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into
hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched, where the worm
dieth not and the fire is not quenched." He repeats that again and
again also. I must say that I think all this doctrine, that
hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is
a doctrine that put cruelty into the world, and gave the world
generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you
could take Him as his chroniclers represent Him, would certainly
have to be considered partly responsible for that.

There is the instance of the Gadarene swine, where it certainly
was not very kind to the pigs to put the devils into them and make
them rush down the hill into the sea. You must remember that He was
omnipotent, and He could have made the devils simply go away; but
He chose to send them into the pigs. Then there is the curious
story of the fig-tree, which always rather puzzled me. You remember
what happened about the fig-tree. "He was hungry; and seeing a
fig-tree afar off having leaves, He came if haply He might find
anything thereon; and when he came to it He found nothing but
leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and
said unto it: 'No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever'.... and
Peter.... saith unto Him: 'Master, behold the fig-tree which thou
cursedst is withered away.'" This is a very curious story, because
it was not the right time of year for figs, and you really could
not blame the tree. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter
of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as
some other people known to History. I think I should put Buddha and
Socrates above Him in those respects.

That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not
hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who
have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You
find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion
of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief,
the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state
of affairs. In the so-called Ages of faith, when men really did
believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was
the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of
unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of
cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of
religion.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of
progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law,
every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better
treatment of the colored races, or ever mitigation of slavery,
every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been
consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say
quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its
churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral
progress in the world. …
You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still
so, I do not think that I am. Take one fact. You will bear with me
if I mention it. It is not a pleasant fact, but the churches compel
one to mention facts that are not pleasant. Supposing that in this
world that we live in today an inexperienced girl is married to a
syphilitic man, in that case the Catholic Church says, "This is an
indissoluble sacrament. You must stay together for life," and no
steps of any sort must be taken by that woman to prevent herself
from giving birth to syphilitic children. This is what the Catholic
church says. I say that that is fiendish cruelty, and nobody whose
natural sympathies have not been warped by dogma, or whose moral
nature was not absolutely dead to all sense of suffering, could
maintain that it is right and proper that that state of things
should continue.
That is only an example. There are a great many ways in which at
the present moment the church, by its insistence upon what it
chooses to call morality, inflicts upon all sorts of people
undeserved and unnecessary suffering.

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It
is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the
wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand
by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the
whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if
cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is
at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a
little to understand things, and a little to master them by the
help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the
Christian religion, against the churches, and against the
opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over
this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many
generations. Science can teach us, and

The whole conception of a God is a conception derived from the
ancient oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of
free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and
saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it
seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings.
We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We
ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so
good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these
others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs
knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful
hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by
the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

We are a people of different faiths, but we are one. Which
faith conquers the other is not the question; rather, the question
is whether Christianity stands or falls. … We tolerate no one in
our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity … in fact our
movement is Christian. We are filled with a desire for Catholics
and Protestants to discover one another in the deep distress of our
own people.

The National Government will regard it as its first and
foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and
cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on
which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the
foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of
national life.

Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country] … I
pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy
Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the
Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral
developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press—in
short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which
has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of
liberal excess during the past … [few] years.

We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a
national government the task which has been given to us, swearing
fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk. … This the
national government will regard its first and foremost duty to
restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will
preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our
nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our
collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and
state, under its firm protection. … May God Almighty take our work
into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and
endow us with the trust of our Volk.

Adolf Hitler,
1 February 1933, addressing the German nation as Chancellor for the
first time, Volkischer Beobachter, 5 August 1935, from Richard
Steigmann-Gall's The Holy Reich

The Catholic Church considered the Jews pestilent for fifteen
hundred years, put them in ghettos, etc, because it recognized the
Jews for what they were. … I recognize the representatives of this
race as pestilent for the state and for the church and perhaps I am
thereby doing Christianity a great service by pushing them out of
schools and public functions.

Christian mythology incorporated the cosmological theories
current eighteen centuries ago. Dante found it a slight strain to
combine this mythology with the facts known in his own day. Milton
found it harder. Mr. Lewis finds it impossible.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel
and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man
does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight
line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it
unjust?

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish
thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus
as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.'
That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man
and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral
teacher. He would be either a lunatic—on a level with the man who
says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You
must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God:
or else a madman or something worse.

I have known many Christians—Poles, Frenchman, Spaniards—who
were strict Stalinists in the field of politics but who retained
certain inner reservations, believing God would make corrections
once the bloody sentences of the all-mighties of History were
carried out. They pushed their reasoning rather far. They argue
that history develops according to immutable laws that exist by the
will of God; one of these laws is the class struggle; the twentieth
century marks the victory of the proletariat, which is led in its
struggle by the Communist Party; Stalin, the leader of the
Communist Party, fulfils the law of history or in other words acts
by the will of God, therefore one must obey him. Mankind can be
renewed only on the Russian pattern; that is why no Christian can
oppose the one—cruel, it is true—idea which will create a new kind
of man over the entire planet. Such reasing is often used by
clerics who are party tools. “Christ is a new man. The new man is a
Soviet man. Therefore Christ is a Soviet man!” said Justinian Marina, the Rumanian patriarch.

The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and
product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable,
but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.

Christianity has operated with an unmitigated arrogance and
cruelty -- necessarily, since a religion ordinarily imposes on
those who have discovered the true faith the spiritual duty of
liberating the infidels.

James
Baldwin, "Letter from a Region in My Mind," The New
Yorker (17 November 1962), republished as "Down at the Cross:
Letter from a Region in My Mind" in The Fire Next Time
(1963)

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't
argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more
popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first — rock and
roll or Christianity.

John Lennon, as
quoted in The Evening Standard (London, 4 March
1966).

After a controversy arose surrounding this remark, Lennon
stated it had been taken out of context.

You just come to them and look them straight in the eye and
say, "Yes brother, I'm washed in the same blood as you." It all
comes in the blood—you hear all these sayings "power in the blood,"
"are you washed in the blood," it's a very bloody religion.

Marjoe Gortner, one-time child
evangelist who exposed the fraudulence of
fundamentalist Christian sermons in America in the 1972
academy-award winning documentary Marjoe. He estimates that
he raised $3 million (1960s) dollars in donations.

On this earth you must belong to the church militant or get the
hell out of it. That's the right word. You're either with me or
against me' There is no middle ground in this battle between Christ
and the anti-Christ. If you step out of (the battle), you're worse
than those boys who ran off to Norway, Sweden, those boys who
deserted the government. You're deserters, rotten deserters.

American Catholic priest Charles Coughlin (1973) [Citation
Needed]

When [Jesus] executes judgment over the world at Armageddon, he
will destroy all but the faithful Jehovah's witnesses. [Jesus is
then shown hurling fireballs that destroy New York City, breaking
dams, causing fires, and murdering many people, including
children]. Jesus, alias Michael, will always
remain invisible to those on earth, and can be seen only by the
144,000 select Jehovah's witnesses who rule with Him from heaven.

Examine the history of Christianity. Professing the salvation
of humankind, Christianity has expanded through a tumultuous
history of two thousand years, extending its influence throughout
the world in the present era. Yet what has become of the Christian
spirit that once cast flames of life so brilliant that, despite the
most brutal persecution by the Roman empire, Roman citizens were
brought to their knees before the crucified Jesus? Medieval feudal
society buried Christianity alive. Even though the Reformation
raised high the torch of new life, its flame could not turn back
the sweeping tide of darkness. When ecclesiastic love waned, when
waves of capitalistic greed surged across Christian Europe, when
starving masses cried out bitterly in the slums, the promise of
their salvation came not from heaven but from the earth. Its name
was communism. Christianity, though it professed the love of God,
had degenerated into a dead body of clergy trailing empty slogans.
It was then only natural that a banner of rebellion would be
raised, arguing that a merciless God who would allow such suffering
could not exist. Hence, modern materialism was born. Western
society became a hotbed of materialism; it was the fertile soil in
which communism flourished. Christianity lost the ability to equal
the successes of either communism or materialism and failed to
present the truth that could conquer their theories. Christians
watched helplessly as these ideologies budded and thrived in their
midst and expanded their influence all over the world. What a pity
this is! What is more, although Christian doctrine teaches that all
humanity descended from the same parents, many citizens of
Christian nations who profess this doctrine will not even sit
together with their brothers and sisters of different skin colors.
This illustrates the actual situation of today's Christianity,
which has lost much of the power to put the words of Jesus into
practice. It has become a house of lifeless rituals, a whitewashed
tomb.

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our
country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have
taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a
happy day that will be!

The [Supreme] Court, by seeking to equate Christianity
with other religions, merely assaults the one faith. The
Court in essence is assailing the true God by democratizing the
Christian religion.

John Whitehead The Separation Illusion: A Lawyer Examines
the First Ammendmant (Mott Media 1977)

"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great
intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge, for which
no means are venomous enough, or secret, subterranean and small
enough -- I call it the one immortal blemish upon the human race."

Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on
biblical principles. Christian values dominate our government. The
test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the
bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in
office.

The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain
exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit
publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His
Church's public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy
communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient
Israel.

Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our
religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free.

Pat Buchanan
speech to the Christian Coalition quoted in New York Times
12 September 1993 p. 37

Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America
is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It
is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the
Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals
who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and
discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in
America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority
in history."

If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by
assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels,
then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not
believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which
depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection,
also is not believable.

Atheistic secular humanists should be removed from office and
Christians should be elected... Government and true Christianity
are inseparable.

Robert Simonds How to Elect Christians to Public
Office (1996)

Some fools in the desert
With nothing else to do
So scared of the dark
They didn't know if they were coming or goin
So they invented me
And they invented You
And other fools keep it all going
And growing

Where is my faith? Even deep down … there is nothing but
emptiness and darkness … If there be God—please forgive me. When I
try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting
emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and
hurt my very soul … How painful is this unknown pain—I have no
Faith. Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal, … What do I
labor for? If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no
soul then, Jesus, You also are not true.

The
Twenty-First Century

In 1939, in a stadium much like this, in Munich Germany, they
packed it out with young men and women in brown shirts, for a
fanatical man standing behind a podium named Adolf Hitler, the
personification of evil. And in that stadium, those in brown shirts
formed with their bodies a sign that said, in the whole stadium,
"Hitler, we are yours." And they nearly took the world. Lenin once
said, "give me 100 committed, totally committed men and I'll change
the world." And, he nearly did. A few years ago, they took the
sayings of Chairman Mao, in China, put them in a little red book,
and a group of young people committed them to memory and put it in
their minds and they took that nation, the largest nation in the
world by storm because they committed to memory the sayings of the
Chairman Mao. When I hear those kinds of stories, I think 'what
would happen if American Christians, if world Christians, if just
the Christians in this stadium, followers of Christ, would say
'Jesus, we are yours'? What kind of spiritual awakening would we
have?

His message of peace and reconciliation under almost all
circumstances is simply incompatible with Christian teachings as I
interpret them. This 'turn the other cheek' business is all well
and good but it's not what Jesus fought and died for. What we need
to do is take the battle to the Muslim heathens and do unto them
before they do unto us.

The prevalence of evil and misery has always bothered those who
believe in a benevolent and omnipotent God. Sometimes God is
excused by pointing to the need for free will. Milton gives God this
argument in Paradise Lost:

I formed them free, and free they must remain
Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change
Their nature, and revoke the high decree
Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained
Their freedom; they themselves ordained their fall.

It seems a bit unfair to my relatives to be murdered in order to
provide an opportunity for free will for the Germans, but even
putting that aside, how does free will account for cancer? Is it an
opportunity of free will for tumors?

Only a humorless tyrant could want a perpetual chanting of
praises that, one has no choice but to assume, would be the innate
virtues and splendors furnished him by his creator,
infinite regression, drowned in praise!

I have been called arrogant myself in my time, and hope to earn
the title again, but to claim that I am privy to the secrets of the
universe and its creator—that's beyond my conceit. I therefore have
no choice but to find something suspect even in the humblest
believer[.] … Even the most humane and compassionate of the
monotheisms and polytheisms are complicit in this quiet and
irrational authoritarianism: they proclaim us, in Fulke Greville's
unforgettable line, “Created sick—Commanded to be well.” And there
are totalitarian insinuations to back this up if its appeal should
fail. Christians, for example, declare me redeemed by a human
sacrifice that occurred thousands of years before I was born. I
didn't ask for it, and would willingly have foregone it, but there
it is: I'm claimed and saved whether I wish it or not. And if I
refuse the unsolicited gift? Well, there are still some vague
mutterings about an eternity of torment for my ingratitude. That is
somewhat worse than a Big Brother state, because there could be no
hope of its eventually passing away.
In any case, I find something repulsive about the idea of vicarious
redemption. I would not throw my numberless sins onto a scapegoat
and expect them to pass from me; we rightly sneer at the barbaric
societies that practice this unpleasantness in its literal form.
There's no moral value in the vicarious gesture anyway. As Thomas
Paine pointed out, you may if you wish take on a another man's
debt, or even to take his place in prison. That would be
self-sacrificing. But you may not assume his actual crimes as if
they were your own; for one thing you did not commit them and might
have died rather than do so; for another this impossible action
would rob him of individual responsibility. So the whole apparatus
of absolution and forgiveness strikes me as positively immoral,
while the concept of revealed truth degrades the concept of free
intelligence by purportedly relieving us of the hard task of
working out the ethical principles for ourselves.
You can see the same immorality or ammorality in the Christian view
of guilt and punishment. There are only two texts, both of them
extreme and mutually contradictory. The Old Testament injunction is
the one to exact and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth (it
occurs in a passage of perfectly demented detail about the exact
rules governing mutual ox-goring; you should look it up in its
context [Exodus 21]). The second
is from the Gospels and says that only those without sin should
cast the first stone. The first is a moral basis for capital
punishment and other barbarities; the second is so relativeistic
and “nonjudgmental” that it would not allow the prosecution of
Charles manson. Our few notions of justice have had to evolve
despite these absurd codes of ultra vindictiveness and
ultracompassion. …
Judaism has some advantages over Christianity in that, for example,
it does not proselytise—except among Jews—and it does not make the
cretinous mistake of saying that the Messiah has already made his
appearance. … However, along with Islam and Christianity, it does
insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and
mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in
fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of
any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such
thing.

The [Catholic] church, as far as I know, has not endorsed any
war as just since it supported General Franco's invasion of Spain
to destroy the Spanish republic with a Muslim mercenary army in the
thirties, on the side of Hitler.

Give us this day our daily bread. Oh sure.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us. Nobody better trespass against me.
I'll tell you that.
Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful.
You mean we can't use torture?
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Jane Fonda?
Love your enemies - Arabs?
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.
The hell I can't! Look at the Reverend Pat Robertson.
And He is as happy as a pig in shit.

Since Jesus came to the earth the first time 2,000 years ago as
a Jewish male, many evangelicals believe the Antichrist will, by
necessity, be a Jewish male. This belief is 2,000 years old and has
no anti-Semitic roots. This is simply historic and prophetic
orthodox Christian doctrine that many theologians, Christian and
non-Christian, have understood for two millennia.

Jerry
Falwell, quoted in "Religion, Politics a Potent Mix for Jerry
Falwell" by Steve Inskeep in Morning Edition on NPR (30
June 2006)

I said last year that Israel was entering into the most
dangerous periods of its entire existence as a nation. That is
intensifying this year with the loss of Sharon. … I think we need
to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes
it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my
land.' God considers this land to be His. You read the Bible and He
says 'this is my land' and for any Prime Minister of Israel who
decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says 'no,
this is mine.' I had a wonderful meeting with Yitzhak Rabin in
1974. He was tragically assassinated, it was a terrible thing that
happened but nevertheless he was dead. And now Ariel Sharon who
again was a very likeable person, a delightful person to be with, I
prayed with him personally, but here he's at the point of death. He
was dividing God's land and I would say woe unto any Prime Minister
of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United
Nations, or the United States of America. God says 'this land
belongs to me. You'd better leave it alone.'

The god of Moses would call for other tribes, including his
favorite one, to suffer massacre and plague and even extirpation,
but when the grave closed over his victims he was essentially
finished with them unless he remembered to curse their succeeding
progeny. Not until the advent of the Prince of Peace do we hear of
the ghastly idea of further punishing and torturing the dead.

A thread of hatred runs through the New Testament. It is
inaccurate to call the Christian scriptures anti-Semitic, as the
authors were themselves Jewish, but many of them had become
disenchanted with Jewish religion.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this
great nation was founded not by religionists, but by christians;
not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For that
reason alone, people of other faiths have been afforded freedom of
worship here.

When the Christian majority takes over this country, there will
be no satanic churches, no more free distribution of pornography,
no more talk of rights for homosexuals. After the Christian
majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil
and the state will not permit anybody the right to practice evil.

Gary Potter (Catholics for Christian Political Action)

It is the truth divine, speaking to our whole being: occupying,
calling into action, and satisfying man's every faculty, supplying
the minutest wants of his being, and speaking in one and the same
moment to his reason, his conscience and his heart. It is the light
of reason, the life of the heart, and the strength of the will.

Pierre

"I desire no other evidence of the truth of Christianity than
the Lord's Prayer."

Madame de Stael

There was a book that said the world was created in seven days.
Best seller too.

English

Pronunciation

Etymology

From Latin Chrīstus, from Ancient Greek Χριστός, noun use of
χριστός, khristos meaning anointed. Christian, from the Greek
Christ+ianos, was originally a term used by unbelievers to describe
the followers of Jesus Christ as His possessions (i.e. the suffix
ianos was popularly used to specify the slaves of the one whose
name with which it was compounded i.e. Christianos meant slaves of
Christ), and was the name given to the church by the Greeks and
Romans who most often intended it in a derogatory manner - although
Paul, in referring to himself, made reference to that slave, or
servant, label in a positive way by honorably calling himself a "a
servant of Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:1). The word Christian is first
used in Antioch, according to Acts xi.25-26.

The translations below need to be checked and inserted
above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any
numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See
instructions at Help:How to check translations.

From BibleWiki

The name given by the Greeks or Romans, probably in reproach, to
the followers of Jesus. It was first used at Antioch. The names by
which the disciples were known among themselves were "brethren,"
"the faithful," "elect," "saints," "believers." But as
distinguishing them from the multitude without, the name
"Christian" came into use, and was universally accepted. This name
occurs but three times in the New Testament (Acts 11:26; 26:28; 1
Pet. 4:16).